Sheriff deputies in Lake County, Florida are the focus of public outcry after they went to the wrong home to arrest an attempted murder suspect, did not announce they were officers, and then shot and killed Andrew Lee Scott, 26, when he pointed a gun at the strangers at his door.

Scott went to the door armed after he heard pounding on his door at 1:30 a.m. Since the officers did not identify themselves and Brown was not expecting someone at such an early hour, he clearly thought it was trouble. It was.

Police do not identify themselves and kill wrong man

“The policies the United States has had for the last 41 years have become irrelevant,” said Morris Panner, a former counternarcotics prosecutor in New York and at the American Embassy in Colombia, who is now an adviser at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “The United States was worried about shipments of cocaine and heroin for years, but whether those policies worked or not doesn’t matter because they are now worried about Americans using prescription drugs.”....

Now the drugs most likely to land Americans in emergency rooms cannot be interdicted. Studies show that prescription painkillers, and stimulants to a lesser extent, are the nation’s biggest drug problem. The same survey that identified 1.5 million cocaine users in 2010 found 7 million users of “psychotherapeutics.” Of the 36,450 overdose deaths in the United States in 2008, 20,044 involved a prescription drug, more than all illicit drugs combined.

And whereas cocaine and heroin have been concentrated in big cities, prescription drug abuse has spread nearly everywhere. “Today there is drug use in every county in Ohio, and the problem is worse in rural areas,” said Mike DeWine, the attorney general of Ohio...

George Zimmerman has granted his first non-court-related interview to Fox News' Sean Hannity.

I can't believe Zimmerman's lawyer would allow him to do an interview.

PB, I think that his lawyer is going for a hung jury. If the interview can reinforce the belief of just one juror, he's got it.

i thought the law was going to be strict with these heartless monsters? it shouldnt matter with age nor how rich these 'boys' were. they abused a girl and took pics/video of it to brag to there friends. they should be in jail right now and registered sex offenders.

i hope some major talk shows pick this story up and put pressure on the courts to put the boys in jail or dont punish the victim.

In an extraordinary decision this morning, a judge threw out murder convictions against two Michigan brothers who have served more than a quarter-century in prison.

Cheers erupted in the Wayne Circuit Court courtroom from friends and relatives of Thomas Highers, now 46, and Raymond Highers, also 46. The brothers, after waiting tensely for about an hour as Judge Lawrence Talon laid out the basis of his decision, leaned over to each other, shook hands and embraced.

The Higherses had long maintained they did not shoot and kill Robert Karey, 65, at his east side Detroit home in June 1987.

Today, Talon ruled that new witnesses who never went to police about the killing offered enough evidence in his court to call into question the 1988 decision by then-Judge Terrance Boyle to convict the brothers and sentence them to life in prison...

Two blacks drowned white child in boiling water
July 25, 2012

Two young black males gagged a crying 12-year old white boy and afterwards drowned him in a bath filled with boiling water. The accused yesterday admitted guilt to the murder with smiles as they appeared in the Vereeniging regional court, reports the Johannesburg Afrikaans daily, Beeld.

In a typical South African black-on-white atrocity, the boy and his entire family were massacred on 1 October 2011 in Walkerville, south of Johannesburg. Amaro Jose Viana, of Portuguese descent, his mother Geraldine (42) and father Tony (53) were killed in an attack by the family’s gardener Petrus Radebe (24), Sipho Mbele (21) and Sphiwe David Motaung (20). A fourth black person, a minor whose name was not published and appartently the son of Petrus Radebe, also participated in the attack. All four admitted their guilt on all charges against them.

According to the accused, “we mutually raped Geraldine Viana”. Sipho Mbele raped her first while Petrus Radebe helped to restrain her by standing on her face. Afterwards Radebe raped her too.

Beeld reports that Charmaine Castleman, an attorney appearing for the accused, read a statement in court explaining that the three men burgled the Viana residence to rob them of their possessions and “to get Geraldine Viana back” for the way she had treated them.

The white family’s dog apparently barked tremendously during the burglary. The animal was killed by disembowelling him.

According to Beeld’s court reporter, 12-year-old Amaro’s dad Tony Viana first arrived at the burgled home. The three black men attacked him from behind with a machete and a golf club, after which he was forced to unlock the family safe. He was then tied up.

The boy and his mother arrived later and were tied up in separate rooms. Then the raping started. When Radebe and Mbele had finished raping Geraldine, Mbele placed a cushion over her face to muffle her screams and shot her with a pistol obtained from her husband.

The accused stated: “Afterwards Sipho took the gun and shot Tony in the head.” Mbele and Radebe then went to Amaro’s room and realised that the boy would be able to recognise them.

“We went to the bathroom and turned on the tap. We went to fetch him and gagged him because he was crying. We forced him into the bath face down, knowing that he would drown.”

From forensic evidence tendered in court, it was clear that the boy was held down in boiling water. The exact cause of his death has however not yet been determined by state pathologists. The boy’s hands and feet were tied.

According to Beeld, “Mbele and Radebe admitted guilt on charges of burglary with the intent to steal, robbery with aggravating circumstances, the possession of an unlicensed firearm, the illegal possession of ammunition and intentional damage to goods.”

The accused will be sentenced on 6 September. As the death penalty was abolished in South Africa, they will probably get lengthy prison sentences but could be out on parole within five to ten years.

The vast majority of South Africans, black and white, support the reinstatement of the death penalty, but the liberal Constitutional Court has stated that it would be unconstitutional. The ruling ANC and liberal opposition DA are also opposed to the death penalty.

A search of South African newswires in English for this story has returned an empty result. Until now, only Beeld has reported on the court appearance of the three murderers – in Afrikaans, which is only spoken in South Africa, although easily comprehensible to Dutch-speakers.

http://praag.org/?p=838

Amaro Viana, South African Boy, Drowned In Boiling Water By Patrick Radebe, Sipho Mbele
Huffington Post
July 26, 2012

Two men pleaded guilty on Tuesday to murdering a South African couple before drowning their son in a bathtub full of boiling water.

Patrick Petrus Radebe, 24, and Sipho Mbele, 21, admitted to breaking into the Johannesburg home of 53-year-old Tony Viana and his wife, 43-year-old Geraldine, Sowetan Live reports. The two men raped and shot Geraldine, then attacked Tony with a machete and golf club before shooting him the head.

The two men said that when they realized the couple's 12-year-old son, Amaro, would be able to later identify them, they tied his hands and feet and drowned him in the bathtub. Forensic analysis indicated that the boy had been held in boiling water, the Daily Mail reports.

Before leaving, the robbers killed the family dog by slicing open the animal's stomach.

Radebe had been employed by the Viana family as a gardener, while Mbele was the son of one of the family's servants. A third robber, 20-year-old David Motaung, was with the men, and pleaded guilty to a robbery charge.

A defense lawyer told the Vereeniging Regional Court court that the men originally entered the home with the intention to take revenge on Geraldine Viana for treating her employees badly, according to a translation of Beeld by South Africa's News 24.

The three convicts were allegedly laughing together as they returned to their cells after the proceedings.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/26/amaro-viana-drowned-boiling-water-robbers-_n_1706508.html

The perfect example of why I want to spit in the face of every slimy, soulless, sick, piece of shit liberal who is against the death penalty.

i'm not liberal or conservative, but put political views aside for a moment and look at the story ivy posted. imagine that the victims were your family or close friends. how would you feel if someone commited an act like that and had a chance to one day be free again? it would suck out your life blood and crush you. certain crimes are so horrible that the people who commit them need to die, end of story. they should die in the same manner in which they killed thier victims but that's unlikely to happen so i'm okay with them just being executed with current means but it needs to happen, and happen quick. none of this 20 years on death row bullshit. people often say revenge isn't the answer and that can be true, but not in cases like these!